Beware of the lowball on rail bids

In response to

In my younger days, I spent a few years in Washington in the hardware procurement business. It was the fad at that time to take the low bid on items no matter how critical to keeping aircraft operating. I asked some of the long time civilian engineers why this was the case. I was told that it was required. They frequently stated, when pressed, that the low bidder on a specific item had a track record of producing an inferior product. My observation was that generally speaking, the low bidder was either low balling the bid to get the business, didn't have a good track record in producing reliable hardware, or hadn't studied the problem as long as some of the higher bidders, and didn't understand all the requirements to make it work. Politically it was a hard sell to take a higher bidder. However, I found that if you did your homework, and could prove that they were either incompetent, or had not done a thorough proposal, you could sell it.

I am not an expert on high speed rail, but I have ridden several of them, as well as conventional trains. From an engineering point of view, there are a lot of precise things that have to come together for a smooth, reliable, and safe ride. In my opinion, they should go for a company that has experience in building high speed rail, and has the reputation for reasonably reliable cost estimates. Believe me, it is far less expensive to do it right the first time than to spend two or three times the original estimate to fix a lousy product. Ah, Politics!!